Saturday, December 31, 2011

"Shintaro Ohata is an artist who depicts little things in everyday life
like scenes of a movie and captures all sorts of light in his work with a
unique touch: convenience stores at night, city roads on rainy day and
fast-food shops at dawn etc. His paintings show us ordinary sceneries as
dramas. He is also known for his characteristic style; placing
sculptures in front of paintings, and shows them as one work, a
combination of 2-D and 3-D world."

"A snub dodecahedron made from 120 paperclips. I designed this in response to George Hart's paperclip snub dodecahedron challenge,
imposing a few additional constraints of my own: the paperclips should
support themselves without glue, solder, etc., and the pieces should be
recognizable as paperclips, with as little modification as possible. In
this design, half of the paperclips have been bent at the middle, and
the other half are intact and outline the central triangles."

Action figure fans have known about DC Direct's upcoming "New 52" figures for awhile, but Mattel will be delivering its share of updated toys in 2012 as well. CBR
got a first look at Mattel's second wave of DC All-Stars figures coming
in the new year, which will include Superman and the Flash in their
"New 52" looks, plus Red Robin and Supergirl (the evil one in the black
costume) in costumes from DC's previous continuity.

"The final addition to my SC II collection. Raynors Raiders
Battlecruiser as it appears in the campaign. All in all I've been
working 6 month on this model which is 115 studs long and includes
around 15,000 pieces."

Bourrasque is a sculpture 25 meters in length and over 15 meters tall at its highest point. It is composed of 200 A3-sized sheets of electroluminescent material, a
technology which has recently advanced rapidly to produce a range of
sophisticated colour temperatures, in thin and extremely flexible
sheets. Each of the double-sided sheets were hand-molded in London and assembled on site on a framework only just barely visible to the human eye.

Tourists check out some amazing lit-up
ice sculptures at the 13th Harbin Ice and Snow World in Harbin,
Heilongjiang province. The Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival
will be officially launched January 5, 2012.

Tired of hearing about Vader, Luke, Han and Leia all the time? Artist Elliot Quince decided to give some of the lesser known characters in Star Wars a bit of the limelight in his clay work Plasticine Tatooine. He could only imagine how bitter the neglected characters must have been at not making it big, how badly they were treated on set or how cruelly their lives have panned out since the movies were released. To put the spotlight back on the unlucky group, he molded their sad portraits with plasticine, a brand of modeling clay.

"Fame and fortune awaited for the lucky few but spare a thought for those who never made it big; those forgotten extras, downtrodden walk-ons and bitter bit parts," says Quince. "Plasticine Tatooine gives those lesser-known characters a chance to air their grievances and to lift the lid on life in the Star Wars second string." Buy the book.

"The top image is a drawing I did in Kindergarten of Spiderman roping and
riding a Monster. This weekend, I went through a large group of
drawings I did when I was a kid. I was 6 when I drew that Spiderman
drawing. That drawing is on the back of my Kindergarten assessment. I
was always in trouble for never following the directions of the group. I
didn’t want to follow the group, I wanted to do my own thing. That
letter to my parents above is one of many. Also, there were many
parent-teacher conferences. According to my teacher, All I ever wanted
to do was draw, never paid attention, too much of a daydreamer and so
on. That was the reason why I chose to redraw that image from my
childhood. Today there are many blogs where artists have taken what they
drew as a kid and recreated it later in life. I thought I would try it,
and now I want to do more. Now that I have my own child, I want her to
be an individual and certainly to color outside the lines."

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, it was the obvious decision to marry her, but it wasn’t so obvious as to how I would pop the question.

I
have always wanted to do it big. I’ve entertained a lot of ideas, from
renting ad space on the big screen at our local movie theater to display
a giant graphic with a larger-than-life proposal, to doing a cliche
write-it-out-in-christmas-lights-on-the-front-lawn gig. I figured, my
feelings for her are massive, so the proposal should be equally massive.

The sweetship from Firefly,
known only as Serenity, gets served up in this custom gingerbread house
created by Norway’s very own Kristoffer Gressli and his brother. Check
out more photos on his Facebook page.

An egg and an apple build competing broadcast towers that vie for the attention of a transistor radio. With its complex characterization and narrative of animal evolution, competition and reproduction, SEED is a beautiful and sinister stop-motion story about the struggle to survive.

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

A very Lego Dalek Christmas: The Addis family of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, England, like to decorate just like any other family during the holidays, but they go one step further: They build giant Lego sculptures (such as nutcrackers, churches and postboxes) every year.

Jacques Cowan is what the French call "a runner of the woods." He may be
a foreigner in the new world but Jacques quickly learned the ways of
the native people, their language, their routes, and their skills. But
he didn't leave his life in another land for adventure, freedom, and
wealth - he had much more in mind than trading pelts and cheating death.
Jacques had listened intently to the stories that had crossed the
ocean, extraordinary tales of mystical creatures and unknown forces. Black Goat
finds Jacques mid-hunt, as he closes in on what others thought was a
legend. What he doesn't realize is that the legend is on a hunt of its
own.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Algonquin College. Exam week can be stressful on students. Inspired by the Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus, the Television Broadcasting students at Algonquin College wanted to showcase the new Algonquin Centre for Construction Excellence by lightening the mood with the help of the Ottawa Regional Youth Choir and Darth Vader.

"Krampus is Santa Claus' whip-toting Christmas sidekick. According to
legend, Krampus joins Santa where he tends to the children on Santa's
naughty list. No coal here though. Instead, Krampus whips and licks
children into shape or carries them off in his sack."

This amazing thirteen meter tall Christmas tree was officially lit on December 4th, 2011 in Kaunas, Lithuania. According to the original sources like Delfi and Lrytas, the tree was
constructed of thirty-two thousand plastic green bottles and forty thousand Christmas trees held erect on a metal frame.

On window panes, the icy frost
Leaves feathered patterns, crissed & crossed,
But in our house the christmas tree
Is decorated festively
With tiny dots of colored light
That cozy up this winter night.Christmas songs, familiar, slow,
Play softly on the radio.
Pops and hisses from the fire
whistle with the bells and choir.
My tiger is now fast asleep
on his back and dreaming deep.
When the fire makes him hot,
he turns to warm whatever’s not.
Propped against him on the rug,
I give my friend a gently hug.
Tomorrow’s what I’m waiting for,
But I can wait a little more

In 1989, comics author and novelist Neil Gaiman sent a Christmas card to friends and family that included a very dark take on the story of Santa
en titled "Nicholas Was..." In the years since, it has not only become
something of an expensive collector's item, but also an inspiration for
fan-made works, including a rather inventive pop-up book.
Gaiman challenged readers to create new interpretations of the story
last year as well, and you can see the results -- which included a
puppet version -- in a holiday blog post.

As part of an outreach project at the Niels Bohr Institute I have recently designed a model of the ATLAS experiment in LEGO®
bricks. It illustrates all details, from the muon and magnet system to
the innermost pixel detector and will hopefully be a great eye-catcher
for all generations. Here's some key features:

about 9500 pieces

roughly 1:50 in scale (close to scale with the LEGO® man)

material cost of about 2000 Euros

about 1 m x 0.5 m x 0.5 m in size

approximately 33 hours construction time (spread out over several weekends and after hours)

Knowing a painting is forged changes how your brain sees it: "Our findings support what art historians, critics and the general public have long believed — that it is always better to think we are seeing the genuine article. Our study shows that the way we view art is not rational, that even when we cannot distinguish between two works, the knowledge that one was painted by a renowned artist makes us respond to it very differently."

"So I carve landscapes out of books
and I paint Romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return
to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they
become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently
nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that
which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and
clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are." Biblios. The Great Wall.

Zombie Typeface: Even typographers need to prepare for the inevitable rising of the
undead. To encourage them, Avery Oldfield, Jack Inscoe and Amanda
Dockery made a typeface that reminds them to get ready with every word
that they read.

Help! The pigs are trying to ruin Christmas. Grab the sling shot and fire those birds! From the people who brought you the Guitar Hero Christmas Light game! Running on two computers and 10 Light-o-rama 16 channel controllers, uses more than 20,000 lights and less than one cent of electricity per game. Audio is broadcast on 99.1FM, and the controller has a long enough cord for people to play in their cars on the street. Easier than the iPhone version, and bigger too."

Artist Murray Groat has a imagined a twisted world in which Tintin meets the horrors of H.P. Lovecraft, including Cthulhu and the Deep Ones, and visiting famous Lovecraft sites like R'Lyeh and the Mountains of Madness. Unfortunately, due to the Tintin copyright, the posters aren’t available for sale, but if the idea of the curious young detective navigating a bizarre and possibly malevolent alien landscape captures your imagination, I suggest you check out Charles Burns’ newest book X’ed Out.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

"Have you always wanted to own a copy of The Neverending Story? Now you can! Modern digital book readers and tablets can holds thousands and thousands of books - truly a never-ending supply! ... These book covers are hand-crafted from high quality leather and suedes and bound with filigree and an auryn on the cover, just like the book we all know and love. These are made to fit Kindles and Nooks, and for an added cost can be done up for an iPad or a Galaxy tablet. They are a perfect way to protect your reader and gives it a high level of protection while attracting a lot of attention and comments from friends and passersby."

2011 in Lego Pictures: From
the royal wedding to the death of Osama bin Laden, the English summer
riots and the fall of Gaddafi, here are some of major news stories of
the past 12 months captured in Lego by Flickr members.

The interactive Codex Atlanticus is an interactive book containing more than 100 of Da Vinci’s most fascinating manuscript pages. The pages can be “turned” and it’s possible to zoom in on Leonardo’s
sketches, and the inventor’s secret messages and notes, many of which
can’t be deciphered with the naked eye.

Every December, the Rainbow World Fund (RWF), the only international
humanitarian aid organization based out of the lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community, erects an enormous Christmas tree in the Rotunda of San Francisco City Hall. They decorate the tree with thousands upon thousands of small origami cranes inscribed with the hopes and wishes of participants around the country.

According to RWF Founder Jeff Cotter, "The World Tree of Hope joins together individuals of diverse
cultures, points of view, spiritual beliefs, socioeconomic backgrounds
and sexual identities, and taps into two of our most powerful resources –
the human mind and heart – to give individuals a way to join together
to express our hopes and intentions for the future of our global
community."

Visit The Rainbow Fund to have your wish for the world inscribed on an origami crane and
placed on the World Tree of Hope in San Francisco's City Hall.

Team 2X is a professional martial arts performance consisting of members with experience in Hollywood films and television. With their unique talent in creating mind blowing fight sequences and GakAttack's passion for combining Visual FX with Martial Arts action. Jedi Ninjas became the result of this collaboration.

Part of the Trauma exhibition at
London's GV Art gallery. The pieces all relate in some way to physical
and psychological trauma inflicted on the body, contributed by a range of artists
working in collaboration with medics. Trauma is free and will be on exhibit at the GV Art gallery at 49 Chiltern Street, West London, through February 18.

Artist Mary Johan Juver has created quite the imaginative collection of
mash-ups portraying everyone's favorite cartoon family as the charactersof J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of The Rings series. The set is
hilarious, and I'm surprised that using Homer Simpson to portray Aragorn hasn't been done before.

Scott Listfield resides in Massachusetts. His site, the Astronaut Dinosaur is devoted to paintings of dinosaurs and - you guessed it - astronauts. The astronaut portraits are especially intriguing. They almost seem to be set in a post-human world, maybe a post-apocalyptic world, devoid of other life. They put me in mind of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

“While there are probably a hundred reasons I make art, I can think of
two that, if either one stopped being true, I’d probably go do something
else. First, I enjoy it. That might sound stupid, but there is no real
glory in making art, it’s not any more noble a thing to do with your
time than anything else. If I didn’t like doing it, I’d stop.